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The Washington Post is reporting that the sophisticated 'Flame' malware was created by the United States and Israel in order to collect intelligence on Iranian computer networks. The intel was to be used in a cyber-sabotage campaign intended to slow Iran's development of nuclear weapons. This follows confirmation a few weeks ago that the U.S. and Israel were behind Stuxnet, which caused problems at Iran's nuclear facilities. From the article:
"The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States. 'This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,' said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. 'Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.' ... The scale of the espionage and sabotage effort 'is proportionate to the problem that's trying to be resolved,' the former intelligence official said, referring to the Iranian nuclear program. Although Stuxnet and Flame infections can be countered, 'it doesn't mean that other tools aren't in play or performing effectively,' he said."

How about doing some research or at least keeping up with the news before spewing? One of the two US attorneys on the leak case is Rod J. Rosenstein, a Republican appointed into his current position as US Attorney in 2005 by George W. Bush -- hardly the profile of an Obama partisan.

Good thing Eric Holder is appointing two Obama partisans to investigate the leaks.

What exactly is an "Obama Partisan?"

Perhaps Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Army Secretary John McHugh, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman? All of these people are Republicans, conservatives, or people who served in Republican administrations. Finally as another poster here pointed out one of the two investigators appointed is a, gasp!, Republican! If you're drinking the Fox coolaid you may believe that the current administration is partisan, but it flies in the face of the facts. This President reaches across the aisle repeatedly looking for compromise only to have his open hand slapped. If you're looking for partisanship you'll have to look elsewhere.

I mean seriously? Who else besides the Israelis a) hate Iran and b) have the technical chops to do it?

Believe it or not, we're not the most technologically sophisticated country. China has more honor students than we have students. Most of Europe has a more developed telecommunications infrastructure than we do; internet, mobile phones, cable tv, you name it. We are not number 1.

As to who else hates Iran and has the capability to do something about it... it should be pointed out we don't hate Iran. We hate any country who tries to acquire nuclear weapons. Something the size of a suitcase can destroy a major city... it's why we worked so damn hard with the Russians to disarm as many of them as we could. Not every country will play nice: Some of them will do whatever it takes to beat their enemies, even if that means killing themselves in the process. Unfortunately, all the countries currently working on making nuclear weapons fall into that category, including Iran.

The only reason we're fucking around with 'cyber' warfare instead of curb stomping them is it's an election year and our economy is in ruins thanks to fighting two unnecessary wars based on our President deciding to finish what his daddy started rather than leave well enough alone, and our country having a momentary fit of stupidity where we had to kill everyone and everything wearing a funny hat because a couple of our sand castles got kicked over by a bully.

No, they don't. Most Chinese live in poverty, only dreaming of the luxury of higher education.

Most Chinese live in big cities (more than a million inhabitants) and have access to government scholarships if they score well on the university entrance examination (gaokao).

The scholarships are a pittance, and many students have to work part-time to get through university, but their universities are loaded with brilliant people.

China is a developing country and many people do live in poverty, but there are likely more kids with (real!) Gucci bags in Chinese cities than in the US. You have no idea how fast the place is developing.

I don't agree with it, and it sure makes America look like a hypocritical dick, but yeah it's not really terrorism. You could argue what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan by America is terrorism, which to be honest is the only way to win there, you can't occupy it for ever and if you can't scare every one into submission the problem will return when you leave, because you won't of fixed any underlying issues, and may of even made them worse. But i don't see the same terror that happened on 911 or with the civilian deathroll in the middle east happening in Iran research centres, at least not due to cyber terrorism (I’m well aware of the Israeli assassins taking out Iran scientists).

I can kinda see both arguments, but "We're spying on your obviously high profile nuclear program" and "our virus broke some of your enrichment hardware", probably just don't have the same shock and terror as "someone just randomly blew up a bus with your family in it". If you find yourself going to the dictionary to figure out if something is terrorism, you're trying too hard.

Though when the Israelis sent people to execute Iranian nuclear scientists and such... that might well qualify in a more traditional

Which scares you more, Stuxnet and Flame, which at the very least appear to have been fairly specifically targeted, or Iran with nuclear weapons?

In another way, at least Stuxnet and Flame have come to light, show us what's possible, and start us thinking about how to counter. Imagine a world where such capabilities had been kept in the dark until used on a public infrastructure attack.

Which scares you more, Stuxnet and Flame, which at the very least appear to have been fairly specifically targeted, or Iran with nuclear weapons?

That's so easy, it's unfair: Stuxnet and Flame, of course. They already have caused considerable damage on a wide scale, and while they are targeted, it would be way too easy to re-target them on something that matters to me.

Iran with nukes, on the other hand, is still theoretical, still has a long way to go, and even if they had nukes the chances are 99:1 that they would use them for MAD and not actually use them and even if the extremely remote chance of a nuclear detonation came to pass, it would almost certainly not affect me in the slightest.

And, quite frankly, I don't buy nuclear fearmongering coming from the only country ever to actually drop nuclear bombs on civilian cities, twice.

Iran with nukes, on the other hand, is still theoretical, still has a long way to go, and even if they had nukes the chances are 99:1 that they would use them for MAD and not actually use them and even if the extremely remote chance of a nuclear detonation came to pass, it would almost certainly not affect me in the slightest.

I'm not really sure which would scare me more, an already nuclear weapons capable Israel or the possibility of a nuclear weapons capable Iran (if it isn't there already). The Israelis call Ahmadinejad irrational and judging from some of his public utterances that seems to be true. However, I'm not all that impressed either with the rationality of some of the ultra right wing nutters that we have seen manning Israeli governments over the last couple of decades. Thankfully cooler heads have prevailed until no

> the only country ever to actually drop nuclear bombs on civilian cities, twice.

True, and the US has used nuclear blackmail more than any other country, regrettably.

But there is another perspective on having used the nuclear bomb in war - historical necessity. There are many who say that a "demonstration event" would have sufficed, that the nuclear bomb need never have been used in war. Unfortunately I don't believe that. I don't believe that there would ever be sufficient fear of the nuclear bomb until it had actually been used to demolish a real city and kill real people. Also unfortunately, there was a very narrow window when that could be done "safely" - without the threat of a full-fledged nuclear exchange. That was the few years when the US had the Bomb and the USSR didn't.

Plus if you ever studied the period, you'll see that many feel that using the bomb saved at least a million lives on both sides - the cost of a protracted air/sea/land war in the Pacific. Even the Hiroshima bomb didn't convince Japan to surrender - they felt that there could only ever be one bomb like that. After Nagasaki, the surrendered because they thought that we could just keep dropping bomb after bomb like that - the first one wasn't unique. What they didn't realize was that at the time we'd made 3 bombs, Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki - that we'd shot our wad. I don't know how far in time we were from a fourth, and I don't know how Japan would have acted had they known we couldn't do it a third time, even.

From my reading of Wikipedia the USA could have likely produced a couple implosion style nuclear devices a month in short order. The implosion design only needed 6.2 kg of plutonium while the little boy design required more than 60 kg of enriched uranium. While plutonium was being produced more slowly the fact you needed one tenth as much material more than made up for it.

The main holdup on using implosion devices was that they required using explosive lenses, which were a bleeding edge field at the time.

Does it hurt being so wrong and stupid? I bet it does.. ANYWAYS. Even *after* we nuked them TWICE the emperor surrendered.. but what did the military do?
They fucking attempted a coup. So EVEN if the emperor had agreed to surrender before the nuke the military STILL would of attempted a coup and probably won before the nukes landed.

I think the term you are looking for it "espionage". I'd hardly call it sabotage when the point was to collect information without being detected and after being discovered it was programmed to remove itself without a trace.

That was what I read, although that was third hand with the BBC quoting the Washington Post (I think) quoting an anonymous source, who said that Obama specifically authorised it in his role as Commander in Chief. Generally, attacking a foreign power needs to go quite a long way up the chain of command to get approval. The CIA wouldn't have launched the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, without approval from the President.

All of them. Hiding your tracks is the opposite of terrorism. Terrorism, by definition, requires maximum awareness of the activity. Public fear is quite the point of terrorism, and covering your track defeats that.

You're referring to a previous story that you misinterpreted to mean that the US would consider cyberattacks to be an act of war. What that story actually said was that cyberattacks against certain key infrastructure might be considered an act of war if it were serious enough. Quoting:

If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation.

That basically says that they won't rule out military force in certain extreme cases. Nor should they.

And for Iran's part, if they'd like to consider Stuxnet to be an act of war, they can. Heck, they could consider Obama forgetting to say "bless you" after Ahmadinejad sneezes to be an act of war. That's the fun thing about the word "consider". But they won't, just as they didn't consider Israel's assassination of their nuclear scientists to be one.

I'm sorry that international espionage isn't as cut and dry as you'd like it to be, but that's just how it is and has been for most of history. There were pretenses of chivalry in Europe (and likely other places) for a time, back when royalty was a good ole boys' club and the peasants would be the ones dying. We're past that now, and I for one am glad of it.

So if the United States sabotages Iranian efforts to develop nuclear power, and they have an energy shortfall which results in 100 preventable deaths of Iranian civilians who were on life support, this is just as bad as if the Iranian cyber-warfare division deliberately cut the power to a US hospital and 100 American civilians on life support died?

Yes, I'm sure they would be seen in exactly the same light by the U.S. administration and public.

So if the United States sabotages Iranian efforts to develop nuclear power, and they have an energy shortfall which results in 100 preventable deaths of Iranian civilians who were on life support, this is just as bad as if the Iranian cyber-warfare division deliberately cut the power to a US hospital and 100 American civilians on life support died?

We and other countries have bent over backwards to offer Iran access to nuclear energy. If that's all they wanted they could have had it a decade ago, for cheap. No, they wanted to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon. When we blew up those centrifuges, we did it using computers AND NOBODY GOT BOMBED.

And before you get your jimmies rustled about those poor people in that energy starved hospital, may I remind you that Iran is one of the world's biggest oil producers. I think it might just be barely po

However, there is a double standard. Iran is trying its best to be recognized by the international community as a modern Islamic democracy, Obama is looking for more blood to put on his Nobel Peace Prize. The American public on both sides of the political aisle are crying out for another war and even the smallest thing could set off a "drone war" leading to a full-scale conflict.

Iran is trying its best to be recognized by the international community as a modern Islamic democracy,

Oh for fuck's sake, give it a rest. There should be a -1 "Naive" mod for this.

I'm no apologist for the US government, they can do and continue to do terrible things, but to pretend that things in Iran are better for the average citizen than they are for the average US citizen is ridiculous.

Iran is a terrible government (heck, all governments are terrible) but their international relations are much nicer than the US. The last major war that Iran fought was against Iraq, who invaded Iran in the 1980s. The last major war that the US fought was against Iraq which was several thousand miles away from the US. Last time I checked, Iran didn't have friendly drones in other countries constantly bombing them and writing off civilian casualties as being "terrorists".

That ignores that Iran is helping prop up the Syrian government, and that Iran has been one of the chief funders of Hezbollah and other organizations which have repeatedly attacked Israel. Moreover, comparing small countries to large countries when it comes to foreign policy is not generally representative- large countries have much more wide-ranging interests and have much more ability to project power in the pursuit of those interests. So to really do very badly on foreign policy you need to be large.

You're referring to a previous story that you misinterpreted to mean that the US would consider cyberattacks to be an act of war. What that story actually said was that cyberattacks against certain key infrastructure might be considered an act of war if it were serious enough.

I didn't misinterpret anything. It is you who are playing with semantics.

Stuxnet was an attack on industrial control systems used in Iranian nuclear power plants.
Are you implying that US nuclear power plants are not considered key infrastructure? And that a cyberattack bringing down that infrastructure would not be considered an act of war?

I'm sorry that international espionage isn't as cut and dry as you'd like it to be, but that's just how it is and has been for most of history. There were pretenses of chivalry in Europe (and likely other places) for a time, back when royalty was a good ole boys' club and the peasants would be the ones dying. We're past that now, and I for one am glad of it.

I don't know what the Iranians have done to you that makes you happy that the US and Israeli government is dangerously meddling with Nuclear power plants and risking

Oh come on, you know full well that Stuxnet was targeting the centrifuges. Screwing with centrifuges is not going to take their power grid offline, and it's certainly not "risking the lives of Iranian citizens". You're either being dishonest, or you are woefully ignorant of how nuclear power works.

As for your support, I couldn't care less about it, and I've certainly never said anything even remotely like "they hate our freedoms".

I have a strong dislike for irrationality, fear-mongering, and lies. I see a lot of all three whenever the topic of the United States comes up on Slashdot. The US certainly has its flaws. Lots of them in fact. But if you believe Slashdot, you'd think the US is some sort of comic book dystopia. So yeah, I push back against that sort of paranoid fear-mongering. I know I'll never get through to the true believers -- just as I'll never convince truthers that Bush didn't plan 9/11 along with Rockefeller and the queen of England -- but hopefully I can stop some forum lurkers from being lured down that path of irrationality and lies.

As for Iran, I don't consider them to be a threat to the US. But if they obtain nukes, it will cement the leadership in power, as it did in North Korea. We all saw the beatings, rapes, and murders that the Iranian government employed against its people when they protested Ahmadinejad's reelection. Do you really think it would be a good thing for that regime to have even more power? I would never support a war in Iran, because that would kill innocent people. I don't even support Israel's assassination of nuclear scientists. But by the same token, I do support actions that prevent the current regime from obtaining nukes, because I think that Iran having nukes would also cause more death. Not through nuclear attacks, mind you, but by perpetuating a regime with a horrid record of human rights abuses. Delaying or preventing that possibility, without bloodshed, is a Good Thing.

I don't know what the Iranians have done to you that makes you happy that the US and Israeli government is dangerously meddling with Nuclear power plants and risking the lives of Iranian citizens

Stuxnet only attacked specific hardware configurations known to exist in Iran's uranium enrichment facilities.Stuxnet infected other computers, but did nothing malicious to them.There was no risk to nuclear power plants or Iran's civilian population.

but the Iranians haven't done anything to me, and so I'd prefer to take an approach of innocent until proven guilty before instigating a war against them.

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal fiction created so that our system of justice can be fair.It does not mean you are innocent and outside the legal system no one has to abide by that standard.

That said, allowing Iran to go nuclear would lead to nuclear proliferation amongst its neighbors.At the same time, directly attacking Iran would cause them to lash out, in all directions, at once.It's a lose-lose situation that Stuxnet turned into a moderate win.

The point is the hypocrisy, as in when the US promptly killed more civilians by bombing Afghanistan just after 9/11 than had died on 9/11 and few Americans seemed to notice -- as in Israel condemning Iran's nuclear program when they themselves developed nuclear weapons in the 60s while literally lying about it.

Whether Iran considers assassination of their nuclear engineers to be an act of war by Israel isn't that relevant since Iran is in a state of war with Israel. In fact, they are at this point the only country in the region which has essentially refused to ever even remotely attempt to consider sitting down at a negotiating table with Israel. (Even Syria has done more). For all purposes that matter, Israel and Iran are at war. The only marginal way that they might not be from a legal perspective is that Iran doesn't recognize Israel's existence. So assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists just means that the state of war is heating up.

And if a normal person builds an aircraft carrier and conducts military exercises in national waters, they'd also go to prison. What is your point? If a government isn't allowed to do things that individual citizens can't, then it's not a government. It's a social club.

The U.S. law on computer intrusions specifically exempts law enforcement and intelligence agencies:

"(f) This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States."

This is the price we pay for electing people who are willing to criminalize nearly every action of ordinary citizens, and almost no action by government officials, even when they engage in actions that most people would consider criminal.

For example:

- torturing people- computer hacking- spying on people without a warrant- snatching people for rendition in violation of the laws and sovereignty of the countries where they are snatched- holding people, sometimes the wrong people, in indefinite detention without a hearing- assassinating people including U.S. citizens without a trial- using drones to assassinate people, often innocent civilians, in countries where no state of war exists while violating the sovereignty of nations we are not at war with

There are stories every other day about Chinese and Russian efforts to compromise U.S. military networks, agencies and schools. When was the last time the U.S. declared war over foreign attempts at espionage?

My conjecture is that we will be at war with Iran in time for the election, call it a November surprise. Bunch of FUD stories from the Ministry of Information's various major news network puppets, and then we'll all be chest-pumping while the populace sings let's roll in the tanks.

I know a guy who voted for Obama because of his foreign affairs, and he is still happy with Obama.

The reason is because Obama defers to the UN, or at least NATO on decisions like Libya. To people who prefer that style, then Obama is a good leader. He hasn't invaded Syria, for example, where other presidents might have.

I'm not so sure. In human history, long periods of peace occurred when a power was able to dominate its surroundings and achieve a sizable hegemony. The Roman Empire, the many Chinese empires, the British Empire, all encompassed periods of relative peace and cultural advancement. They snuff out the upstarts before anyone could grow powerful enough to start a prolonged war that might have cost 10 or 100 times the number of deaths.

So will you come back and admit to being wrong when you inevitably are?

Israel has been trying to get Obama to go to war alongside them for quite some time now. He's refused. Maybe because we can't afford it, maybe because he doesn't think its necessary, maybe because his base would desert him, maybe because he just thinks that wars of aggression are bad. But declaring war right before an election? Absolute political suicide. His base would desert him, his opponents would mock him for his transparent ploy, and independents would look at the bill from Iraq and blanch.

Now, if Romney wins, we might be in Iran by November of 2013... maybe. But I think Syria is the more likely candidate. He already wants to arm the rebels, and his party wants to go further than that.

Actually he decided to commit our country to support a popular uprising against a dictator, which ultimately succeeded in deposing said dictator without putting American boots on the ground. You and I obviously have our differences if you don't see the contrast between that and Iraq2003, but I for one have no problem with the way he handled our involvement in Libya.

In case anyone was wondering what the evidence was, here is the relevant quote:

[Flame] was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its American partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Generally these kind of leaks, especially when they happen as much as they have lately, happen at the direction of officials. It's not an accident. The question is why are all these anonymous leaks being passed to the press? Is it because they want Iran to think we have greater capability than we actually do? Some people have speculated that this is an attempt to give Obama an election boost, but one leak is enough to do that, he doesn't need to keep leaking....So what is the purpose?

The simplest explanation is that it's dick waving.Which, when all comes to all, just shows us that you're dicks.

An alternative explanation is that it's an attempt to bully AV companies into silence, and reduce further investigation and looking for more malware of the same type.

Either way, I think the TLAs and Israel misunderestimate the animosity this causes among normal people who could very well be hit by this warfare. A backlash may be coming, including official protests from other countries, and perhap

Your question makes no sense.I think there are several extraordinary blackhats. For every one that the government has recruited, there are likely ten more which they haven't.And they don't even have as narrow a target as Siemens - they can target any critical system used by the US or Israel.

I work for Siemens, though on their medical devices, and, in a word, yes. In two words: fuck, yes. Hell, the girl from "Jurassic Park," who "knew UNIX" could hack at least one line of Siemens medical products.

Spot on. All of this could very well be attempts at misdirection. The leaks come out just as talks are starting to fail, so it could also just be an attempt to ratchet up the pressure and force them back to the table.

Costly for some, very profitable for others, in fact that others really need more wars, interventions and forced putting them in control of oily resources and related management. Lot of people will die, billons will be wasted on weapons, and the country image will degrade even more, but some people at government and military (and some special civilians) will become even richer, and thats what really matters. You can assessinate, rob and rape entire countries in plain view if you are strong enough.

Isn't the only sane response at this point from Iran to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible to stop us from fucking with them? Then we either decide to leave them alone or go to war with them and bankrupt ourselves.

I think that Iran should declare war on the US over it. That'd be good for some lolz. You know, like every youtube video where a little fluffy kitteh picks a fight with a doberman:-P But honestly, what are they going to do? Threaten us and Israel, build weapons, launch test missiles? Seriously, I can't think of anything they can or would do about it and if they formally attacked us, that'd be about it for them. This is going to embarrass the hell out of them when they basically are forced to do nothing about it.

It's now a free-for-all on the Internet for nations to go head-to-head with malware and cyber-espionage. Just like Ike let the Soviets launch their Sputnik to clear the air (heh) about whether territorial rights extend into space (they don't), now the US and Israel have justified it for everyone else to do their own Flame and Stuxnet cyber-espionage.

Since the US is supposedly the leader of the free world, we can either lead by good example or bad. Setting a bad example gets us exactly what we deserve.

Isn't it just nice when our allies decide to send this kind of shit out on the network where it risks going on to wreak havoc indiscriminately? And for what - to satisfy cravings of a bunch of paranoid Mossad and CIA officers?

See this is the logical breakdown that some people have. MAD. Some government actually do care, no matter how destructive the soviets were to their own people. They actually did have some understanding of their actions to the world as a whole. Knowing there would be nothing left of the world if they nuked the US. The US knew the same. India and Pakistan are at a similar point. Though as Pakistan slips further towards the militant islamist side it become less so. North Korea wants a bomb to threaten anyone, and will use it against the south, simply to use it. Israel has it to protect itself from arab states that have repeatedly tried to annihilate it(another form of MAD).

Trust is a tricky thing. What you should be asking is, what do they care about if they have it and what do they care about if they use it, and expect to gain from it.

North Korea wants a bomb to threaten anyone, and will use it against the south, simply to use it.

Possibly, but unlikely, as at that point even China wouldn't protect them anymore and they'd be pulverized into the ground. Their main deterrent right now is that they could cause massive civilian damage to S. Korea in a war, which is why they can provoke the South any time they want attention without actually starting a war. Use a nuke and that deterrent is gone.

So I am curious to know on a scale from 1 - 10 (1 being no threat and a 10 being we should be shitting ourselves) how members of this community view the threat of a nuclear armed Iran.

2, maybe 3 if I were feeling pessimistic. Iran is not at war, and the only countries I could conceive of Iran trying to attack are in possession of plenty of reliable, well-designed nuclear weapons. Iran is not run by complete idiots, they know there is no way they could win a nuclear war with Israel or the US.

Iran wants nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip, a way to assert itself during negotiations by hanging the threat of a nuclear attack over everyone's heads. Iran knows that the US and Israel h

Yes, that'll serve the cause of democracy. Shoot the people who are revealing to the populace all the immoral things you're doing. While it quite possibly would serve the careers of a number of politicians, I think your suggestion is more treasonous to the people of your nation than the leaker.